WHEN there's nothing left to cling to but hope, the only solace you can seek is the comfort of others.

That was Ibrox yesterday. The last refuge. A club on its knees, propped up for a day by defiance.

Crowd? Capacity - minus one. The best seat in the stadium conspicuously empty, its regular occupant as unwelcome as the plague in his own house. Same as his predecessor probably.

But despite this day being visited upon Rangers by Craig Whyte and Sir David Murray, it wasn't about them.

It was about the rank and file. About showing the cause will always be greater than any individual within it.

And what it created was astonishing.

What should have been a funeral turned into a frenzy. More befitting a title party than the hollow 90 minutes it became.

There was simply nothing normal about it from start to finish.

At quarter to two the administrators were busy briefing journalists in the oak-panelled opulence of the boardroom - with a weirdly grinning framed portrait of Whyte hanging over them - while 2000 fans were gathered on the doorstep below singing their hearts out.

In defiance? Sure. In protest? Too damn late.

Inside, it was as far removed from a run-of-the-mill league game at Ibrox as you could imagine. Especially one as meaningless in terms of a title race as this one.

It was like an Old Firm game without the vitriol. Seats filled early, players with a spring in their step in the warm-up. And the bedsheet brigade had been hard at work as well.

Draped around the stands, epithets like "Rangers - our passion, our club, our life", "Our club will never die" and a dozen others.

Even the match day programme went for pathos on the front cover, tugging at the heartstrings of the loyal with a quote from Bill Struth: "No matter the days of anxiety that come our way, we shall emerge stronger because of the trials to be overcome."

It could have been uttered this week, far less 70 years ago.

The one line that was uttered this week, though, was front and centre. A giant furrowed-brow image of Ally McCoist on the big screens with his quote that has been made legend: "We don't do walking away".

A 21st-century "No surrender" perhaps? Whatever, McCoist was, unusually for him, in the dugout from the start here, as visible to the fans as the £24million of their cash is invisible to the administrators trying to find it.

A chorus of "Super Ally, away away away", the likes of which he won't have heard probably since 1997, must have put a lump in his throat like a Size 5.

And to follow, a rousing rendition of "If you hate Neil Lennon, clap your hands", as relevant as an Alex Salmond opinion on the club's administration.

What the whole thing did, though, was create 'us' and 'him'. A clear signal that the ordinary Rangers fan has woken up and inhaled the coffee over what Whyte has done to their club.

Falling into the "any port in a storm" category came their half-time guest - the one and only Marvin Andrews. Have faith, came the message. Keep believing.

The game itself felt so much like the old days the crowd obviously forgot they weren't living in a supposedly bygone era when they turned on ref Iain Brines for a decision they didn't like with a chorus of "Who's the f***** in the black?"

Maybe they think the authorities will take pity on them in the circumstances. Hopefully the authorities aren't that shallow.

Still, the fans have bigger worries. One 90-minutes worth of protest won't change things. Won't make Whyte or their problems go away.

Listening to the administrators and their frankness yesterday, it feels like it will only get worse before it gets better.

And amid all the talk of titles being stripped, of relegation rather than points deducted, they deserve all that's coming to them and probably more.

It's hard to argue the principle of Neil Lennon's argument about 'financial doping'. Whether he should have said it out loud at this stage is maybe a different matter.

But as ever, it's the punters who pay for the sins of their masters.

The team? The result? An afterthought. They've lost ground in the league race this week through their trainwreck business policies - the fact they lost even more through their sheer mediocrity on the park will barely register as a footnote when the week is recorded for posterity in their history books.

They could have played all day and not scored and a vibrant Kilmarnock side have to take most of the credit for that. They were excellent

But in some ways you have to feel sorry for the Rangers players. The atmosphere would have been an inspiration on any other Saturday but was so incongruous to the reality of their situation it must have felt like a ton weight on shoulders already straining with the load.

The supporters have more to worry about than points. Still, nice to know that out of the darkness can always come humour.

With seconds left, up went their traditional rendition of God Save The Queen?

With HMRC on their tails? Surely a conflict of interests for her maj...